Davian wrote:Because people got sick of the massive corruption inherent in the Party Machine/Caucus system...It might be hard to believe but the Primary process is a huge step forward from that. Unless, of course, you'd officially prefer to go back to a system where a couple Party Bosses choose the nominee with zero input from anyone else.

I thought the way it used to work was that the convention delegates ultimately chose their candidate. Lets face it, the Republican machine pretty much selects the candidate now anyway. They get Fox News to poo-poo, humiliate, and/or totally trash any real candidates, or they find and expose things whereby to destroy them (as with Herman Cain), so in the end their chosen boys from among the "short list" are the only players left.

I was thinking that if the Republicans elected their candidate at a Convention, that would circumvent the charade of having the Democrats select the Republican nominee from among the short list that the establishment back room boys within the party have pre picked to begin with.

Officially, yes, that was the system. The reality was basically a series of backroom deals by party bosses "Bossism System" in major power centers for each party. This was particularly true during the Gilded Age when big business (the Carnegies, Mellons, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, etc) basically ran the country as they saw fit and used their money to pick presidential candidates. There was a significant nadir of actual power for the Executive Branch from Lincoln's death till the turn of the 20th century as a result of this. Teddy Roosevelt and his reforms were a big part in the process of recentralizing power in the Chief Executive. A notable exception to this rule was Grover Cleveland who managed to not only take on Tammany Hall while he was Governor of NY and win but also managed to get himself elected to two presidential terms as staunch reformer of this system...though Sam Tilden played a big part in the fall of that particular "Boss".

The last true Bossism president would be Harry Truman as his political career was started in large part due to the political machinery of the Kansas City Bosses. Ironically, he turned on them once he became a Senator and was renowned for his ethics and honesty and this continued into his Presidency (which never would have happened if not for FDR's death...the Dem Party Bosses DID NOT want Truman in charge of anything, let alone the Presidency). A big part of him becoming VP was to get him out of the Senate where he was making too much trouble with his crackdown on defense profiteering. It should be noted that Nixon did take advantage of the Boss system in his successful run but his victory had far more to do with the lack of a viable alternative in the 1968 election due to the complete disarray in the Democratic party that had, by that point, split into four separate factions that all hated each other. There was also the huge issue of their most popular candidate being assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan. He won in 1972 when the Dems ran the furthest left candidate to ever win a major party's nomination when McGovern was their standard-bearer.

I cannot support a man that can't win, sorry Ron Paul. Now, Rand Paul on the other hand, he may have a chance, a place amongst the republicans, maybe even a voice they can't muzzle unlike his father. I can't forget the great speech given by Marco Rubio, it still resonates and he certainly has a future.

lsayre wrote:So the Republican Party cleansed itself of Bossism by instituting the charade of the public voting by state "primaries" system? Let's get real here.

Not at all. The demand for a "clean" primary was brought on by Bossism...shockingly, the primary system can be nearly as corrupt but it now as the veneer of populism as you are voting for your candidate. This, of course, ignores that the field of candidate is limited significantly by money/funding from special interests and from personal wealth (the last truly poor President would again be Truman. None of the candidates in this year's field were what you would consider even upper middle class. They were, as most Presidential candidates in the last 200+ years, from the elite of the elite.

A great example of the flaws in the current system: The states of Iowa and New Hampshire have a massively disproportionate influence on who the candidacy's for each Party. SC should also be thrown into that as well. Their overall populations are 9 million (for all 3) but their spot on the Primary calendar (and caucus for Iowa obviously) make them far more important than they should be.

I agree. If you are going to waste zillions of dollars on primaries, at least some billions could be saved by having them all on one day. And the embarrassing specter of the early primary states and meaningless straw polls weeding out the good and honest (I.E., non machine selected) candidates before the larger and more important states even get a go at it is eliminated that way also. It also greatly limits the potential for Democratic fence jumping during the primaries. The machine would never go for this.

Last edited by lsayre on Mon Nov 12, 2012 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

lsayre wrote:I agree. If you are going to waste zillions of dollars on primaries, at least some billions could be saved by having them all on one day. And the embarrassing specter of the early primary states and meaningless straw polls weeding out the good and honest (I.E., non machine selected) candidates before the larger and more important states even get a go at it is eliminated that way also.

While we are re-doing the election process lets also require a compulsory voting system as in Australia. All Australian citizens over the age of 18 must be registered to vote and show up at the poll on election day. Australians who do not vote are subject to fines although those who were ill or otherwise incapable of voting on election day can have their fines waived.

Yanche wrote:While we are re-doing the election process lets also require a compulsory voting system as in Australia. All Australian citizens over the age of 18 must be registered to vote and show up at the poll on election day. Australians who do not vote are subject to fines although those who were ill or otherwise incapable of voting on election day can have their fines waived.

In fact, Ron Paul voted for Mitt Romney or maybe Gary Johnson. But he did vote and voted for someone "similar" to himself, not the same, and we all should have as well. Your NON vote for Romney was a vote FOR Barack Obama!!

EarthWindandFire wrote:The difference is simple, if Ron Paul were the nominee, the candidate, I would have voted for him. Did you not vote for Romney during the primary, or Romney the presidential candidate on November 8th?

Voted for Ron Paul in the primary and Gary Johnson in the general.

But that's exactly what I'm saying. The RP people were in no way going to vote for Romney, especially after the dirty tricks at the convention.

But the Romney people, who typically will vote for whoever the nominee is out of some bizarre sense of "party loyalty" would have voted for Ron Paul even if they didn't really like him.

The stats I posted indicated that if Romney had gotten all the people who voted for RP in the primary, he'd have picked up an additional 66 electoral votes and we'd have a whole different ball game today.